With local explorers in mind, we developed a feature within the Caltrain App that empowers local businesses and riders alike by reinventing the Caltrain as a means of exploration.
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UX Researcher
Video Director
Video Editor
Photographer
Bennie Nkwantabisa
Carmah Hawwari
Shun Ueno
Nadia Ansari
User Research
Usability Testing
Needfinding
UI/UX
Interaction Design
Project Overview
The Caltrain is the oldest form of public transportation in California, servicing a wide variety of individuals in the Bay Area. Though it is seen primarily as a mode of transportation, the Caltrain is often used as a vessel to explore 77 miles of a rich, unique culture.
Tasked with the challenge of improving an experience related to the Caltrain, my group tackled the current experience of using the Caltrain for this niche purpose. There is currently no singular, efficient method of discovering personalized recommendations to patronize in areas near the Caltrain station, making the exploration process destination-oriented rather than the desired journey-oriented.
Additionally, in a survey conducted in 2019, only 5% of Caltrain riders used the Caltrain app. Though this figure has imaginably risen since, use of the app is still low enough to allow room for innovation in what its capabilities related to the Caltrain are.
As a human-centered designer, I worked with my fellow teammates to conduct user research and develop a prototype to resolve these issues as efficiently as possible.
Background
The Caltrain, an electrified train in the Bay Area, is one of the main sources of public transportation in the Bay Area, especially for explorers. Explorers include university students, visiting tourists, and those in the Bay who primarily use the Caltrain to travel.
The areas near the Caltrain stops are full of restaurants, shops, cafes, and entertainment. Oftentimes, those looking to explore the Bay like to use the Caltrain as a means of patronizing these nearby vendors.
Conversations with Caltrain riders revealed an interesting, common desire:
Explorers want to be provided with the options for places to visit around them, especially if those recommendations are personalized.
We dove deeper into this revealed desire and placed ourselves in the perspectives of both Caltrain explorers and local businesses near the Caltrain to come up with a guiding question towards a solution.
How Might We Ideation
Crafting Perspectives
Diving Deeper
Competitive Audit
We performed a competitive audit of mobile platforms that currently, most closely fulfilled the needs of our user group.
User Interviews
As a team, we conducted 6 user interviews with riders at Caltrain stops, Stanford students, and a Stanford Transportation administrator.
Auditing
What did other platforms do well? When we initially spoke to Caltrain users about our proposed solution, what alternative mobile platforms did they mention?
We came together to identify the strengths and weaknesses we recognized of in some alternative platforms that provided functionality that most closely resembled a solution to our problem.
Apple Maps
💚
Provides start-to-end navigation
Displays nearby vendors
Provides vendor information
❌
Overwhelming number of nearby vendors shown
Reviews not displayed
Only on Apple devices
No personalized recommendations
Destination-oriented
Google Maps
💚
Customer reviews provided
Start-to-end navigation
Available from online search
Lots of filters available
❌
Overwhelming number of nearby vendors shown
Separate app from purchasing app
No personalized recommendations
Effort to find true local insight
Destination-oriented
Yelp
💚
Customer reviews provided
Navigation is easy to access
Can save favorites & frequents
❌
Recommends locations that aren't close to requested area
Saving favorites only for those with account
Separate app from ticket purchasing
Doesn't appear to have the same locations as other apps
Conducting User Interviews
Who uses the Caltrain and why?
We interviewed 6 Caltrain users from a variety of backgrounds in order to gauge their current Caltrain ridership habits. Next, we condensed our initial observations into three users profiles.
Following the idea of expanding exploration options for Caltrain riders wanting to discover new areas through the Caltrain, I created a preliminary sketch of how the flow of our feature might look. Some features we decided were important to implement included:
Feature vs. App: Implemented an additional Explore feature into the Caltrain app rather implement a separate app.
Explore Notification Upon Arrival: Included entry notification that welcomes rider to their landing station once they've arrived, alerting them to Explore feature within the app.
Map View: Included a map with respective pinpoints to visualize the distances of selected businesses.
I created a low-fidelity prototype that included the basics of what we wanted our solution to address.
First Round
We informally presented our first prototype and received valuable feedback on the functionality, feasibility, and implementation from various designers, including IDEO founder and Stanford d.school founder, David Kelley and Stanford Director of Transportation, Lesley Lowe.
Presentation infographics
Feedback
Users enjoyed the accessibility of the feature within the app versus an entirely separate platform as well as the general idea overall, stating that the idea itself had strong potential. The main feedback we received from our informal presentation centered around:
Business Feasibility We needed to evaluate the cost of implementation for the Caltrain and the financial benefit for businesses involved.
Solution Novelty Though the idea itself was appealing, users did not feel that our prototyped solution had a great distinction from currently-existing navigation apps.
Iteration
Using the feedback received in initial testing, we adapted the prototype to create a higher-fidelity representation of our solution.
Second Round
Over the course of a week, we performed several usability tests with willing participants at the Palo Alto Caltrain station. We gave users a task: imagine you wanted to find a new restaurant in an area near their destination of the Palo Alto Caltrain stop. All users were able to complete this task! What we noticed from this round of usability testing was:
Differentiation Amongst the Game-Averse
Those who didn't care for the swiping/game-like aspect felt the solution still didn't differentiate itself from other apps very well.
Favorites Accessibility
Users wanted to know if they could access their saved favorite vendors from stops that they weren't traveling to.
Swipe Instruction Intuition
Initial swiping instruction card was unintuitive; most users tried to tap the screen away rather than swipe.
We created a short video encapsulating our user, need, insight, and idea. I directed, produced, and edited the video, opting to create a dramatic representation of the user journey that balanced both entertainment and clarity.
Best viewed in full screen and at least 720p for cinema experience. Enjoy!
Concept
Two friends set adrift on the sea of monotony; in directing this video, I wanted to capture the need (not want, need) for Caltrain explorers to discover new recommendations personalized to them. I utilized the power of silent film and repetition for the first half of the video describing the journey towards CalExplore becoming a necessity.
Cast + Crew
Acting: Nadia Ansari and Carmah Hawwari
Voice Acting: Shun Ueno
Video Production: Bennie Nkwantabisa
Location
University Avenue, Palo Alto, California
Palo Alto Caltrain Station
Camera
Canon EOS Rebel T7I
iPhone 15 Pro Max
Score
Intense Music for the Dramatic Part of a Film 🎬 | Rose Maris
Inspiring Hopeful Piano - Background - No Copyright | OlexandrMusic - No Copyright Music
Post-Production
This film was edited using iMovie.
Major editing changes to film were mostly related to color-grading since the varying brightness of the day we filmed resulted in inconsistent white balances across clips.
I made sure to shoot a variety of angles per scene to ensure the conceptual consistency of the film.
Integrated videos from consenting usability testers.
Feedback 🎬
Initial feedback on drafts of our video suggested incorporating larger text captions for screen-only texting scenes, balancing the audio across the video for consistency in spoken versus silent scenes, and including a side-by-side visual format for conversation scenes.
Our second prototype was our final due to the nature of the project and its timeline, though we discussed what we would implement for following iterations:
Next Steps
This was a project with a limited timeline due to its structure, so we were only able to create a couple iterations of our prototype. If I had to continue this project, I would focus on:
Creating more clarity on the favorites-saving option for favorites at stations you might not currently be visiting.
Including local perspectives on businesses in the swiping process to give the reviews provided a more authentic feel for the user.
Incorporating Caltrain-specific discounts for those who discover new businesses via the Explore feature. Businesses could equally benefit from being involved (ex. receive higher visibility in the swiping process in exchange for providing these discounts).
Diving deeper into the low use of the Caltrain app. A secondary goal of our feature was to increase usage of the Caltrain mobile app; hypothetically, if CalExplore were to be implemented, I would like to see how the use of the app changes. Additionally, I’d like to conduct more user interviews relating specifically to the Caltrain mobile app to gain deeper insights on who does or doesn’t use the app and why.
Implementing focus indicators. Allowing the option to emphasize exactly what users are focusing on makes the app more accessible. Increasing the accessibility of the platform as a whole would be one of my first priorities (ex. ensuring text to text background ratio meets WCAG guidelines).
Final Design System
Opting to create a feature within the app meant that our product's typography, color scheme, and general visual aesthetic was already established.
Challenges
We faced a few challenges in the user-centered design process, some of which included:
Perspective Variety: Being Stanford students, most of our contacts were also Stanford students with similar Caltrain ridership habits. In order to draw from a variety of perspectives, we took the initiative to interview riders waiting for their train at the Caltrain station so that we could at least interact with riders outside of Stanford.
Solution Novelty: The hardest part of creating our final solution was understanding what would differentiate our product from the alternatives we measured against. Users critiqued the novelty of our solution consistently until the implementation of the swiping aspect to the personalization process. This change made users feel more in control of the recommendations they received and therefore felt that they were being offered something within the Explore feature that they weren’t receiving anywhere else.
Final Prototype
Give it a try!
This was my first user-centered design project for an off-campus stakeholder, and I am incredibly grateful to the Caltrain and DESIGN 121 Teaching Team for providing the opportunity to pursue it!
I learned significantly more about Figma's capabilities and how changing the mechanism of the same solution can revolutionize the way it is perceived. Additionally, I got to better understand the UX design process and learned additional user-centered design methods that I now have in my design tool belt. Finally, I was able to understand the role a video can have in emphasizing a user journey; video production has always been a passion of mine, so it was nice to see that there is space for this skill in the human-centered design field.
Key Takeaways:
You can NEVER have too many insights. There is no such thing as too many user interviews!
You can NEVER have too many iterations! Every chance to incorporate user input makes your human-centered design, well, more human-centered!
Thank you to all of the designers whose critiques helped us create a product we were proud of, and thank you to my team for your amazing teamwork and support in this journey!
